A Shot In The Dark
by CharlieCaller
Summary: Complete Story - Jack is shot and another doctor murdered at a charity funtion.
1. Pleading

Disclaimer: The following characters used in this story do not belong to me; they belong to 'Diagnosis Murder' and related companies. I am not making any profit by using them in this story. I will put them back where I found them when I'm finished. I also pinched references to Big Brother 4 UK, and Shakespeare's Othello, neither of which I own.  
  
A/N: I haven't seen a Diagnosis Murder fic with Jack in for a while, so I thought I'd go write one. I haven't written a DM fic for a while, and I hope my writing has improved since I last did so. I'm done now - enjoy!  
  
Title: A Shot In The Dark  
  
~~  
  
It was a warm mid-July morning in Los Angeles. The expanse of the sapphire sky above its residents contained only the scorching golden sun, nearing its midday peak, and but a few wisps of cotton cloud. For Community General Hospital, a vital organ in the body of a city, it was business as usual. There was, as could be expected on such a day, a greater number of patients coming in complaining of sunburns, hay fever and heat stroke, but otherwise nothing was out of the ordinary.  
  
In the office of Doctor Mark Sloan, Head of Internal Medicine and consultant to the LAPD, the first stage of many that would ensure life becoming less than ordinary was about to take place.  
  
"Here you are, Mark, the patient file for Kirsten Palmer," Doctor Jack Stewart said, depositing the brown file on top of the mishmash of other documents strewn over the desk before plopping himself down on the leather couch.  
  
Mark briefly spared the young doctor a glance before returning to the problem at hand. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, screwdriver in hand, the doctor carefully dug around the insides of the desk fan.  
  
"Still not got it working again yet, huh," Jack said, watching the scene with some amusement. He'd dropped in an hour and a half ago, and Mark had just started working on the fan at that point. Jack thought about suggesting, as he had done an hour and a half before, for Mark to just go out and buy himself a new fan, but he'd been lectured about younger people wasting money buying replacements of things that could be easily fixed, and after a long, stuffy morning he wasn't particularly in the mood for another earful.  
  
"Not quite," Mark said, pliers in his mouth, "but I'm not beaten yet." He paused for a moment, critically inspecting the mesh of wires, before snapping the back panel over the insides of the fan and plugging it into the electrical socket in the wall. The blades sprung to life and rotated for a few moments before slowing and coming to a complete stop.  
  
"Ah," Mark said, looking slightly embarrassed as he put his hand over his mouth. He decided to abandon the fan for the time being, and so changed the subject. "Right, you were saying about Kirsten Palmer, the diabetic - "  
  
"Good morning, amigo," Norman Briggs, the hospital administrator, greeted as he strolled into Mark's office. He gave Jack a sharp nod of acknowledgement before continuing, "and what a fine morning it is."  
  
What do you want, Mark thought to himself as he bit his tongue. "Morning, Norman, what can I do for you?" There were some days, Mark found, that you found it more difficult to tolerate Norman than other days, and an airless July morning without a working fan in your office was definitely one of those particular days.  
  
"I was wondering if you are free tomorrow night," Norman said, launching straight into the subject at hand. He immediately regretted his choice of words once he saw the grin spread across the face of the cocky doctor lounging about on the sofa to the left of him.  
  
"Hey, Norman," Jack laughed, ignoring the look that Mark shot him, "Where do you plan on taking Mark? The movies, or that quiet little Italian place that just opened on the corner of Mayfield Avenue?"  
  
"Watch your mouth, Doctor Stewart," Norman growled. He tugged at the stiff collar and tie around his neck, feeling suffocated by the heat and embarrassed by Jack. He turned back to Mark and switched the charm on again. "Well, Mark?"  
  
The quicker he answered, the quicker he would leave, Mark thought to himself. "I'm free, why do you ask?" Mark said, going through the papers contained within the folder.  
  
"I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to represent Community General Hospital at the Arlington Charity Ball tomorrow evening, at the Mayfair hotel," Norman said with a smile on his face. "You, as head of Internal Medicine, and a well-respected member of the community," he shot Jack a quick look of contempt, "would be the ideal representative. You wouldn't have to make any speeches, just socialize with the other people there."  
  
Mark rolled his eyes, feeling like he'd just been sentenced to death. He disliked those charity functions immensely - not that he felt the charity side was a bad thing at all, but he felt it a chore to walk around in a rigid suit and talk to people he'd never see again, and would never want to see again. But, he also had a huge desire at that moment to get Norman off his back.  
  
"I'll go," he sighed, seeing no way out of it but to just agree. "Just leave the details with Delores."  
  
"Already done," Norman said, rubbing his hands together in a pleased way. "See you, and remember to wear a tuxedo," he said, hurrying out of the room before Mark could change his mind.  
  
After waiting a beat, Mark turned his pleading eyes towards his friend, who was still reclining on the sofa, having watched this act of the show with the same amusement as the previous one, involving the fan. Jack saw those eyes, and had anticipated what was coming. "Oh, no, uh-uh, no way," he said, shaking his head. "Norman wants you to go, because you're a respected member of the community or something. He'd have a fit if I went. Besides, there is no way you're getting me to mingle with a load of doctors whose heads are shoved too far - "  
  
"Free food," Mark said, hoping to try and tempt the doctor to go to the function.  
  
Jack grinned. "You'll have to do better than that, Mark."  
  
"I'll give you the weekend off," Mark said, ready to go to great lengths to get Jack to go instead of him. Usually, he wouldn't be so persistent and would just give in and go, but he had been to too many of those occasions, and they were becoming tiresome. Besides, it would be murder to spend hours of the hot summer evening stuck in a stuffy hall with a suit on.  
  
"Couldn't Amanda go?" Jack asked, suggesting that there was someone else apart from himself who could fill in. He couldn't have been the only doctor in the hospital who could go!  
  
"She's working," Mark said. At least, he hoped she was.  
  
"I haven't got a tux," Jack pointed out, feeling he might have won the argument with that one. He didn't really want to have to wear a starchy suit, but he was running out of ploys to try and evade the event.  
  
"You can borrow Steve's," Mark said, thinking that the two weren't so different in size.  
  
Mark gave up trying to think of tactical means to get Jack to go, and resorted to practically begging. "Please, Jack."  
  
To Mark's surprise, it worked. Sighing, the younger doctor said, "Ah, how can I resist those puppy-dog eyes?" Jack consoled himself with the fact that he had nothing else to do on his night off, and there might be young, female doctors there, but he wasn't going to let Mark in on that particular thought.  
  
"Thanks, Jack, I owe you one," Mark said with a smile, handing Jack the file. He felt bad for letting Jack be the one to take the rap for something he should have really been going to, but he felt he could have been doing far more useful tasks at the hospital than at some charity event.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Jack said, leaving the room to collect the details of the evening from Delores. "You owe me," he called, and Mark chuckled to himself.  
  
~~ 


	2. Bored To Death

~~  
  
Jack sat in his over-comfy chair at the large, round dining table with its pristine white tablecloth, unable to resist keeping the look of pure boredom from spreading over his face any longer. His elbow was perched on the table, and this was the only thing that was keeping his head upright. His eyelids were fighting a losing battle to keep from closing. The man standing upon the vast stage at the front of the hall was making his speech, the third doctor to do so that evening. He had a voice that droned on and on, and to Jack the words and sentences merged together and formed one long tedious mumble.  
  
"Why did I agree to this?"  
  
The dark-haired doctor passed the time by trying to remember exactly how Mark had got him to go to the dinner, so that he could remember to say the next time such an event came up. Still, the prospect of the next two days off was looking good at that moment.  
  
Jack's head almost slipped off his hand as he was startled by the audience suddenly launching applause for the droning speaker. Jack joined in, having no idea why he was clapping, hoping that those seated at his table (particularly the cute redhead) had not noticed that he'd almost nodded off to sleep.  
  
Another man walked onto the stage, and Jack decided that he could spend five minutes being attentive before he next drifted back to his daydreaming. Besides, this guy HAD to be better than Doctor Drone who had been talking before.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce myself as Doctor Anthony Holmes, Head of the Paediatrics Department at Oakes Valley Hospital, in San Francisco. I'd like to begin by saying to all your Californian doctors that the work we do in the Children's Centre at Oakes Valley could never be done to the high standard we are currently achieving without the help of..."  
  
Jack looked up to the ceiling and began to count the light fixtures.  
  
~~  
  
Another rippling applause signalled that the speeches were finally over, and Jack clapped loudly in celebration of this. He looked at his watch and grinned. He knew exactly what the next part of the evening was.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen, the buffet cart is now open for business. Now, if you please, we'll let one table at a time go up. We'll start with Table A."  
  
Wonderful, we're Table G, Jack thought to himself. People began to get up and mill around, mingling with each other, but Jack remained seated. He was inspecting the bunch of flowers that had been placed in the centre of the table when out of the corner of his eye he saw someone sit next to him. He looked over and saw the redhead.  
  
"Good evening," he said, flashing a winning grin and extending his hand to her, but she neither smiled nor shook it.  
  
"Oh, now you remember your manners," the woman began, her anger as red as her hair. "You spent the last hour and a half looking like you were watching paint dry. Couldn't you have looked the least bit alert and attentive?"  
  
Jack had gone right off the redhead. "Hey, what's your problem?"  
  
"Those people who went up there and made their speeches spent a lot of time and work preparing them, and you have the nerve to sit there and snore right through them all."  
  
I must have fallen asleep, Jack thought to himself. "If those guys had have made their speeches more interesting, actually worth listening to, then I wouldn't have been so bored!"  
  
"One of those speakers is my husband," the woman growled through her teeth, and Jack found himself thinking how cute she looked when she got angry. "The third one, Doctor Burton."  
  
Jack thought for a moment before saying, "Oh, yeah, the Dro... the doctor of neurosurgery."  
  
"So you paid attention for that much," the woman said, looking ever so slightly surprised. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find my husband, a kind, considerate man." With that, she flounced off, leaving Jack with what he thought would be the highlight of his evening.  
  
"Table B to the buffet cart, please" the man with the PA called out, and both Jack and his stomach groaned simultaneously. At least, he thought, it gave him a long time to try and locate the Men's Room, a place he'd been dying to find since the speeches had started.  
  
He walked out into the cool, airy corridor that had colourful carpet so thick laid in it that Jack felt like he was walking on a trampoline. He looked for the sign to the bathroom, and started his journey deep into the rabbit warren of a hotel.  
  
After a while of following the golden signs with the elaborate font reading "Restrooms" written on them, Jack knew he was decidedly lost. He turned another corner in the seemingly never-ending maze when he swore he heard a gunshot. He stopped sharp, and another bang told him he'd not imagined it. Running to what he thought to be the source of the noise, he found two red doors marked "Stage Doors: Function Room A." He momentarily cursed at the fact he'd been wandering around in circles for the past ten minutes before pushing on the metal bars to let himself in.  
  
Jack peered into the semi-darkness and saw a silhouette of a man crouching over a body. His instincts as a doctor took over immediately and he moved towards them. "Here, I'm a doctor," he said hurriedly.  
  
He saw the glint of the gun too late. He'd not taken three steps when he felt the bullet rip through his insides. Jack stumbled back and landed with a crash in a corner containing a few piles of stacked chairs, a nauseating crack telling him that his head had made contact with one of them. As the chairs fell around him, he felt numb, and then nothing.  
  
~~  
  
~~  
  
It was one of those quiet evenings in the hospital that Friday. There had been the case of one teenage girl that had come in requiring her stomach being pumped after what her tipsy boyfriend described as a "wicked" party. Apart from that, the evening up to that point had been uneventful. It wasn't going to stay that way.  
  
Mark had returned to his office after pumping the girl's stomach to tidy up before he left for home, and to clear a space to put the new fan in, when one of the nurses poked her head around the door. "Doctor Sloan, you're needed in ER," she said hurriedly, sounding like she'd sprinted up three flights of stairs. "There's been a shooting, apparently at that charity thing. Three ambulances on the way," she finished, making very little sense but giving enough information for Mark to know that it was both serious and urgent.  
  
And then it hit Mark like a punch in the stomach. Jack was at that charity thing, the charity ball. Mark silently prayed that Jack would ride in an ambulance only as a doctor, and as no one or nothing else. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and hurried with the sea of other staff as they flowed towards the ER.  
  
The first of the gurneys was already rolling into the hospital when Mark arrived. A woman had been shot in the lower back, and Mark ordered that she be operated on immediately in order to prevent permanent paralysis. All through the prognosis Mark tried to conjure up images of the scenario in his mind. What was the gunman like? What kind of weapon did he have, and was he carrying any spares? Three ambulances meant at least five casualties, so it was possible that he had reloaded his gun at some point.  
  
Doctor Amanda Bentley, pathologist at Community General, had arrived in the ER, she too having been informed of the emergency, and instructed the stretcher-bearers that the man with the black tag should be sent immediately to her pathology lab. She had no idea what the emergency was, except that it was a shooting of some sort, else she would have shared the same worry as Mark, who when she looked at him seemed to have aged five years since she had last seen him five hours ago.  
  
Amanda turned around and prepared herself to analyse the injuries of the next patient. The gurney rolled in, and she gasped when she saw who was on it. "Jack!"  
  
Mark heard the cry and feared the worst. He finished examining the patient who was grazed by the gun, and gave them a yellow tag before moving swiftly to Jack's gurney.  
  
"Gunshot wound, upper pectoral, no exit wound, heavy bleeding," the young EMT rattled off, holding the drip with one hand as he rolled the gurney with the other. "Also, abrasion and contusion to cranium, probably concussion."  
  
"Red tag, get him to OR stat," Mark said, barking the orders. It wasn't the worst of the cases, but if the bleeding wasn't stopped and the bullet removed, it could be fatal, something that Mark did not even want to think about at that stage.  
  
Mark walked alongside Jack's gurney, the checked squares of the floor rushing by below him. Jack fumbled with his oxygen mask and murmuring in pain said, "A guy... shot... stage..."  
  
"Take it easy, Jack," Mark said, replacing the mask and watching as Jack drifted back into unconsciousness. Mark already had a rough idea of how it was that Jack came to be shot. He imagined that he'd seen someone lying unconscious, bleeding possibly, and Jack went to help the person, not realising that the shooter was still in the vicinity. The young doctor was in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Jack should never have been there. It should have been me," Mark murmured so that only he could hear what he had said.  
  
"Doctor Sloan," a nurse said to him, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Dr Marcus will be performing surgery, will you be assisting him?"  
  
"Yes, I will be assisting," Mark said firmly. This was the best solution - Mark wanted to be in the operating theatre with Jack, but perhaps being in the driving seat in the operation was not the best idea. He followed the nurse and began to scrub up.  
  
~~ 


	3. Morning Coffee And An Autopsy

~~  
  
Delores walked into her office early the next morning, whistling a tune she had heard on the radio when she had woken up. She flung open the blinds and windows, still whistling, to let some air into the already stuffy office. She walked into Doctor Sloan's office to do the same, but stopped in her stride when she saw a blanket on the floor with a large lump curled under it, a shock of white hair poking out of the end.  
  
"You really ought to go to that place you call home once in a while, or your paperboy's going to have to learn to throw long," she said, shaking Mark's shoulder vigorously to wake him up.  
  
"Wh-what?" Mark groaned, squinting at his watch. "Eight-thirty already? Hmm, I've had six hours of sleep," he said cheerfully, obviously having expected far less than that.  
  
"And just what were you still doing here four hours after your shift ended?" Delores demanded to know as she folded the blanket. "Having a slumber party?"  
  
Mark struggled to his feet, putting his hand to where he felt the strain in the lower part of his back. He made a mental note to put a camp bed in his cupboard in case other occasions such as this arose. "Operating," he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "I was about to go home when guests from the Charity Ball rolled in, having been shot by some kind of mad gunman. Jack was one of them," he finished solemnly.  
  
Delores stopped dead. "Jack Stewart? He got shot? Did you operate on him? Is he okay?" She asked, firing the questions at him in a panic. Delores was fond of the young, streetwise doctor, and she was immediately concerned for his well-being.  
  
"Yes, to all four," Mark said, taking a moment to absorb the rapid-fire enquiries. "We took a bullet from below his left shoulder, and he's going to have one huge headache when he wakes up, but he'll be fine."  
  
"That's a relief," Delores said, placing the blanket back in the cupboard.  
  
"Morning Dad, Delores," Steve Sloan greeted, strolling into his father's office, armed with a cup of coffee. "It took about nine hours to interview each and every guest at that Charity Ball last night, on top of looking for evidence. Amanda just paged me, saying she finished the autopsy, do you want a look?"  
  
"Sure, just give me a minute," Mark said, moving to tie the shoes he had taken off before he went to sleep on the floor. "Who identified the body?"  
  
"Anthony's aunt was called in, no one could get hold of his brother until after it was confirmed," Steve explained, having been told this by Amanda not long ago. As an afterthought, he added, "Say, Dad, I thought you said Jack was at that Ball - I never saw anyone interview him."  
  
"Jack did go, but he was taken here," Mark said, not really wanting to tell the story many more times so he shortened to one small sentence. The three words, separately, were insignificant, but put together in the same sentence, they had quite an effect. "He was shot."  
  
Steve almost dropped his coffee. "Jack was shot? Is he okay?"  
  
Mark didn't mind telling people this part of the story repeatedly. "The surgery was successful, and if there are no problems then all he'll be left with is a concussion and a scar," he said, standing up from where he had crouched to tie his laces. Wryly, he said, "come on, there's a corpse waiting."  
  
~~  
  
"Morning," Amanda said wearily, picking the file up from the desk. Her scrubs were covered in blood and bags could be located beneath her eyes, inferring that she'd had an even longer night than Mark. "Is that coffee?" She asked longingly, her senses able to detect the black liquid from a mile away.  
  
Steve smiled. "Here, you can finish it," he said, placing the cup on her desk, aware of how much she needed it. He turned to the lump beneath the thin sheet. "Anyway, is this our victim?"  
  
"Yeah, the only fatality of what could have been eight," she said, silently adding that Jack could have quite easily been one of them. "Hold onto your breakfast, guys," Amanda warned before whipping the sheet off of the cadaver. Both men screwed up their faces slightly, but they had been in their respective professions long enough to become almost used to it, no matter how much they disliked it.  
  
"Meet Doctor Anthony Holmes," Amanda said, glancing over the notes she had made. "Twenty-eight years old, and that's about all I know as far as his background goes. His aunt couldn't tell me anymore than that he was a doctor."  
  
"I'll fill you in," Steve said, remembering what he had read when given the initial profile of the victim. "He's spent almost two years in Paediatrics at Oakes Valley Hospital, and has done so well that he was made head of the department last month."  
  
"Wow, someone works fast," Mark noted almost enviously, thinking about the many arduous years it have taken him to become Head of Internal Medicine at Community General. Mark wondered how on earth it had taken one doctor less than a year to progress to the stage of head of department.  
  
"There's motive there, for someone," Steve said, writing this in a small notepad. "Holmes had just made a speech at the Charity Ball, and once he'd finished people began to get up, mill around, and visit the buffet cart. Meanwhile, the victim had been making a phone call backstage, according to the cell phone we found under the curtain. He was backstage when he was killed."  
  
"Here's the odd thing," Amanda said, directing the doctors to the victim's rather bloody head. "Look at where the bullet entered, the angle of it. It looks like someone fired at him from directly above him."  
  
"Steve, did they have any kind of ladders or ropes that could be climbed up backstage?" Mark asked, having not had a chance to visit the scene himself yet. He wondered how else the bullet could have entered at that angle.  
  
"I'll call and get it checked out," Steve said, whipping his phone out of his pocket and dialling one of the investigators at the site. Now that he had picked up clues from the corpse itself he could begin to make certain connections, such as in this case where the killer was so that the victim couldn't see him, and being directly above him was certainly an ingenious means of being concealed.  
  
"This rules out the possibility of our murderer being a madman - this person knew what they were doing," Mark said. "What else, Amanda?"  
  
"Death was instantaneous," Amanda said, turning a page in her notes. "By the way, the family are coming in later, at about ten o'clock, to formally identify the body."  
  
"We'll be back for that," Steve said, looking at his watch. "I'm going back to the Mayfair Hotel to check out if there was anything to climb backstage before I see the family." He walked out of the room, talking on the phone  
  
"Call me if you find anything," Mark said, he too checking his watch. "I'm going to visit Jack, I'll see you later."  
  
~~ 


	4. Friends And Family

~~  
  
Nothing's changed, Mark thought to himself as he walked into Jack's room and smiled. The patient, even though he'd been out of surgery for only eight hours, seemed to have already regained the capability of holding a deep and meaningful conversation with one of the blonder nurses in the hospital.  
  
"Good morning," Mark said cheerily, trying to smother a smile at Jack's slightly embarrassed look and the nurse's now very red face. He picked up the chart and read over it, turning his back on the two so that they could have some privacy to bid farewell to each other.  
  
"Bye, Doctor Sloan," the blonde said, still blushing furiously as she tugged her short skirt down and scuttled out of the room.  
  
"How're you doing, Jack?" Mark asked in a serious tone, replacing the chart on the end of the bed. Physically, Jack appeared to be recovering well, a good sign was that he was already up and talking this soon after coming out of surgery, but there were always mental side effects after going through ordeals such as this. Still, this was Jack he was talking about - this guy took everything in his stride, and very little seemed to bother him in the long-term, nothing like this.  
  
"Not so bad," Jack said in a slightly hoarse voice, glancing down at the arm that was bandaged up at that time. He cleared his throat and said, "I'm not too crazy about the percussion band inside my head at the moment, but I'll live with it. I'll tell you what, the nurses in this hospital are the best medicine," he added, grinning from ear to ear.  
  
Something inside Mark snapped right at that moment, something that had built up from all the stress of the previous hours of worrying about the man in front of him, something that made him do something very uncharacteristic, out of the blue.  
  
"Jack, you were shot and you've been out of surgery eight hours, how can you joke like that?" Mark scorned, regretting his outburst even as the words left his mouth. He was about to apologise but Jack spoke first.  
  
"I'm sorry, Mark, next time I won't help the next guy I see lying on the floor." Jack was taken-aback - Mark had never spoken to him like that before, no matter what situation Jack had landed himself in, and he had landed himself in quite a few.  
  
Mark was very ashamed at how he'd just spoken to his friend. "I'm sorry," he said sincerely, looking deep into Jack's hazel-brown eyes. He wasn't angry with Jack - that was not the case at all. Mark was angry with himself, he felt that if he had been at that Ball, if he hadn't have been so lazy and had spent that time talking Jack into going, then Jack would not be lying in a hospital bed. Mark thanked his lucky stars that a bullet to the shoulder and a concussion was the only thing he had to worry about, as it could have been something far worse, like a coma, or Jack could have had his own autopsy. Mark preferred not to even consider that thought.  
  
Jack knew exactly what Mark was thinking - he knew Mark only too well. "Mark, you couldn't have prevented what happened just by you going to the Ball instead of me, what good would that have done? Don't go thinking things like that, what happened has happened, and what happened is not your fault. You weren't the one that fired the gun, someone else did that," Jack reminded him. "You got it?"  
  
"I got it," Mark said with a smile, glad to see that everything as far as his friendship with Jack was concerned had righted itself as quickly as it had been wronged, and that everything was out in the open between them, instead of being awkwardly hidden.  
  
It was now Jack's turn to become serious. "Hey, Mark, you know, the guy on the floor, did he..." he trailed off, expressing a question that had been bothering him since he'd regained consciousness an hour ago.  
  
Mark shook his head, "I'm sorry, Jack, there was nothing anyone could have done. He took a bullet to the head and died instantly," he explained solemnly, seeing the frustrated look on Jack's face.  
  
"Damn," Jack said, lightly thumping the side of the bed with his fist. If only he'd looked before he leaped, he might have, just might have had a chance to save him. But, as Mark had said, the guy took a bullet to the head, and even with some kind of operating theatre in the next room, saving him would have been impossible. "So, it's a murder investigation now?"  
  
"It sure is," Mark said, still solemn yet filled with determination to make sure that the criminal was brought to justice. "Steve will probably drop by later, to ask you a few questions about your version of events."  
  
"I don't know how much help I'm going to be," Jack said dubiously. That was another thing he had been thinking about before the nurse came in to take his temperature. "I don't remember a whole lot about what happened."  
  
Mark was troubled to hear this - Jack was something of a key witness in the investigation, and anything he could have told them would have been helpful. Still, it was by no means Jack's fault, and Mark assured the young doctor this before saying, "I'm willing to bet that Delores will be along to visit sometime this morning."  
  
Jack flashed a grin. "Too late, Mark, she's been along already, where do you think I got this fan from? This new fan," he added, having learnt that Mark had secretly given in and had actually gone out to replace the one that he'd spent hours trying to fix the previous day.  
  
Mark looked over to where Jack was pointing, and sure enough, perched on a chair in the corner was his new fan, quietly humming away to itself as it blew cooling air around the room. Mark allowed his jaw to pick itself up from off of the floor before he, trying and failing to be menacing, said, "I'm having that back when you're better."  
  
"No sweat," Jack said, laughing as Mark looked back around the door to shoot him a glaring look combined with a grin.  
  
~~  
  
Mark had just finished the papers discharging a boy of eight, minus his tonsils, from the hospital when he was paged over the PA system. He gave the papers to the nurse and dialled the extension. "Dr Sloan," he said, fumbling as he used one hand to put his pen back in his pocket.  
  
"Dad, it's Steve," the junior Sloan said, trying to talk over yet another noisy press conference that was taking place in the background. "Listen, I can't get away from the scene right now, it's like a media circus right now, but I have news."  
  
"Oh yes?" Mark asked, all ears.  
  
"Well, like you figured, there is indeed a walkway above the stage, where technicians handle lighting among other things. Someone had been up here fairly recently, as one of the stage lights has been dislodged, like someone had tripped on it. The head technician said that the stage was used a week ago, and all the lights were fixed properly then."  
  
"The walkway would explain the angle of entry," Mark said, glad that they had figured at least one thing out. "Anything else?"  
  
"Well, it looks like the didn't take the ladder down afterwards, I guess it would be too slow. From the looks of things, our murderer took a trip down one of the ropes used to operate the backdrops, because according to our technician, one is looser than all the others, and he said that they were always kept taut so that they don't fall."  
  
"I understand. Shall we carry on the formal identification of Anthony Holmes without you?"  
  
"Yeah, go ahead, I'm going to be tied up here a little longer," Steve said, glancing at the flashing cameras behind him. "Listen, can you ask the family if they know of anyone who'd want to kill Holmes?"  
  
"Sure thing," Mark said, hanging up the phone. He was going to do that anyway.  
  
Mark walked back towards his office but before he could reach it Delores intercepted him. "There you are," she said, speaking to him as though she was the mother of a kid who got lost in a supermarket. "Dr Sloan, the family of Anthony Holmes is here; I asked them to wait in your office."  
  
"Thank you, Delores," Mark said, so glad to have such an efficient secretary. He couldn't even begin to imagine the mess he'd be in if he didn't have Delores around to help him out. He walked into the office, and two faces turned towards him.  
  
The man stood up and extended his hand to Mark. "Richard Holmes," he said, shaking Mark's hand with vigour. "I am... was Anthony's twin brother. This is Amelia, our younger sister." Mark had seen the likeness between the twin brothers instantly - both had thick, dark brown hair that stood up in some kind of tousled shock, and they had quite a few freckles across their noses. Richard had blue-green eyes that looked as though they were two cloudy pools of blue and green water swirling like something had stirred them somewhat.  
  
A thirteen-year-old girl with not-quite-black wavy hair and crystal blue eyes stood up and politely shook Mark's hand. She was dressed in faded jeans and a large navy blue hooded sweater. "Pleased to meet you," she said, immediately taking to the man with the warm, inviting face and sparkling eyes.  
  
"I'm Doctor Mark Sloan," Mark greeted, smiling sincerely. He was pleased to meet these amiable people, but at the same time was saddened by their loss and expressed this as they walked down the hallway.  
  
When they reached the Pathology Lab, Mark hesitated at the door, and turned to Richard. "I know you both came to say goodbye, but this won't be a pretty sight," he said with underlying meaning. The girl did not appear to be fragile by any means, but if this sight had made Mark feel uncomfortable he dreaded to think what it would do to the grieving thirteen-year-old sister.  
  
Richard nodded, understanding what Mark meant. "I'll tell her to wait outside."  
  
Amanda was waiting for them, drinking a fresh cup of coffee as she looked over the notes she had made earlier. After introductions were made, Amanda paused before carefully pulling back the thin, starchy sheet to reveal the deceased lying on the table.  
  
Richard grimaced and turned away. "Anthony," he gasped in a tight voice, making him sound as though he was going to be sick. Swallowing, he said, "I can now definitely see why it was a good idea for Amelia to wait outside."  
  
"I'm sorry," Mark said once again, seeing the pain that Richard was in. Deciding that it was the least he could do, Mark asked, "Can I buy you a coffee?"  
  
"Yes, sure," Richard said slowly, still recovering from the shocking sight he had just witnessed. Mark thought that a glass of water might be better for the man whose visage was as white as the sheet his lifeless had spent the last few hours lying under.  
  
~~  
  
In the hospital cafeteria, Mark felt uncomfortable questioning Richard about his deceased brother in front of Amelia, so he gave her some change and let her go to the vending machine to buy some chocolate.  
  
"Mr Holmes - "  
  
"Richard," he cut in, not seeing the point of the formalities. Truth be told, he was not overly in the mood for formalities, Mark got an idea of this from the haggard expression on the thirty-something's face.  
  
"Richard," Mark corrected himself, "Can you think of anyone, anybody at all, who had a dislike for Anthony?"  
  
"Enough to kill him?" Richard asked, as though the idea of someone wishing to kill his brother was preposterous. But then, however ridiculous the notion sounded, it was reality. He thought for a moment, and there were a few names that came to mind. "I'd feel like a snitch, Mark."  
  
"You want justice for your brother's murder, don't you?" Mark asked, having seen this kind of reluctance often in murder cases. Mark got a feeling that Richard knew the person or persons that he was about to "snitch" on well enough to feel guilty about it.  
  
Richard nodded, seeing sense, and said, "I think perhaps you should talk to Maria Chartham. Maria and Anthony were close," he said, then added, "in fact, so close they were going to get married, but for some reason Anthony broke it off, and never told anyone why. I haven't seen Maria since it was called off, but perhaps she knows."  
  
They were off to a start, it seems, Mark thought to himself. "Where might I find Ms Chartham?"  
  
~~ 


	5. Visiting Hours

~~  
  
Jack was dozing lightly in his bed when he heard the door creak open and footsteps creep in. Opening one eye, he saw Norman Briggs looking at the card that was attached to the bunch of flowers that had appeared courtesy of Amanda on his bedside table. Jack shut his eye again, hoping that Norman had not seen him awake, but he was not discreet enough.  
  
"Ah, Stewart, you're awake, good," Norman said, sounding pleased for a reason that Jack could not for the life of him work out. Perhaps he didn't want to know. No, Jack definitely did not want to know.  
  
"Hey, Mr Briggs," Jack said, sighing. It was tempting to call the nurse and ask for something to help him sleep, instantly, but he had enough self- control not to. "What can I do for you?"  
  
"Just visiting, just checking on you," Norman said, straightening the cover at the foot of the bed. "I care for my staff, you know, Stewart, do you know that? I care for each and every member of my staff like they were my children, and I like to know how they're all doing. How are you doing?"  
  
"Not so bad," Jack said, slightly concerned at Norman's behaviour. Did he miss something, like Norman hitting his head hard on something? Maybe not, Norman had a habit of acting weirdly for time to time, in particular following major disasters, such as being held hostage, or earthquakes. Jack wondered if he'd missed a major disaster somewhere.  
  
"By the way, Stewart, how was it that you came to be shot, and more to the point, why was it that you were the one representing Community General at the Charity Ball yesterday evening?"  
  
Aha, that's what he wants to know, Jack thought to himself. He knew Norman would have to have hit his head really hard to be visited Jack out of kindness. "Well, Mark asked me to go instead of him," Jack said, laying out the facts for Norman. "And I got lost trying to find the bathroom when I saw the guy who got shot. I went to help him, but it was dark and I didn't realise the shooter was still there."  
  
"You got lost trying to find the bathroom," Norman repeated, trying to comprehend what he had just heard. He shook his head and said, "Do you expect me to believe that? Do you really expect me to believe that you were shot due to the fact you got lost looking for the bathroom?"  
  
Jack couldn't resist it.  
  
"No, Mr Briggs, of course not, I should have realised that you are far more intelligent and perceptive to fall for that," Jack said, ready to let rip and give him something amusing to think about whilst he was confined to his dull hospital room.  
  
"Yes, intelligent and perceptive," Norman said, approving of Jack's choice of words.  
  
"You've figured me out, so I'll give you the truth. I'm really a member of the FBI posing as a doctor, and I was tipped off that the key witness in our investigation would be speaking at the Ball, and his speech was the code I needed to figure out who was behind the scam I've been dealing with for five years. So, I asked Mark if I could go instead, of course he knows what I'm really about, but he's the only one who knows and he's kept it quiet. So, after the speech I went backstage to talk with our witness, but someone got there first and got him. I was crouching down to hear his dying words when the shooter came out of nowhere and got me too. That's how I ended up here," Jack finished, enjoying the look of pure astonishment that had crept across Norman's face throughout his tale.  
  
The hospital administrator stood, eyes like saucers, drinking up every word of the story that Jack had just spun. "You, you mean you're a spy, and not really a doctor?"  
  
"Nah, I'm still a fully-trained doctor, but a spy at the same time. They picked me to go on this mission because I am a doctor, if you see what I mean." Jack looked left and right, checking that no one was in the room, listening, and Norman did the same. "I could kill someone with these two fingers," he said, holding up his index and middle finger.  
  
Norman took a step back. "Ah, yes, well, erm, I've, erm, I've got timesheets to check, excuse me."  
  
On his way out of the door, Norman ran into Mark and Amanda. "Dr Bentley, Doctor Sloan," Norman acknowledged before making his quick exit.  
  
"What's gotten into him?" Amanda asked, watching the figure hurry away down the hallway. He was usually uptight, but Amanda was sure she'd never seen him run like that before. In fact, she had never recalled him run at all.  
  
Mark had not failed to notice the grin that had crept across Jack's face. "What did you do to him?"  
  
Jack, still grinning, said, "Norman didn't believe that I got shot looking for the bathroom, which I now remember," he added, having recalled some of what had happened since he had last been visited, "so I told him a slightly different version of events. You'll find out later, I'm sure." He saw the slightly apprehensive looks on their faces, probably at the thought of what he said to Norman, so Jack changed the subject. "So, you guys found anything out?"  
  
"We know for certain that it was a planned murder," Mark said, thinking about how much easier it would be to trace the killer who knew the deceased, rather than a maniac gunman, a theory that they had now thankfully ruled out. "Our first suspect is Maria Chartham, once engaged to Anthony Holmes before he broke it off. I'm going to see what she has to say a bit later."  
  
Mark felt bad for persisting the subject of Jack's memory, but he felt it necessary in order to find out as much as he could so that the identity of the killer could be revealed sooner rather than later. "Can you remember any more about what happened, Jack?"  
  
Jack shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mark, I can remember some stuff, but none of it's relevant. I remember walking into darkness backstage just before I was shot, so even if I did remember anything it would probably be useless." Jack felt a little bit more of his memory of the event come back, and he talked quickly as he tried to get the words out, thinking that he might forget again if he didn't. "There were two silhouettes, one of the guy on the floor and the other of the guy crouching over him. I thought the guy crouching over him might be checking to see if the guy on the floor was alive, but he was checking to see if he was dead. Before I knew it, I got shot." He felt his heart rate rise at the memories, and he tried to slow down. "They were both silhouettes, I couldn't point out either guy if they walked right in front of my face. I'm sorry, Mark," he apologised again.  
  
"Don't worry, Jack," Mark said, patting him on his good shoulder. This backed up Steve's idea of the killer sliding down the rope to check that Anthony was indeed dead. "Keep trying, see if anything else comes back," he added encouragingly.  
  
"There is one thing," Jack said, frowning and looking up slightly as if he was trying to remember the exact details. He wasn't even sure if this was relevant, but he felt he had to say something. "You said this guy is Anthony Holmes, right?"  
  
"That's right," Mark said, eager for Jack to continue.  
  
"Well, he made a speech before he was killed. He said he'd been at Oakes Valley Hospital for two years, and that he'd been made Head of Paediatrics a month ago. Now, there were probably some other employees there who'd worked in that department for years, and had missed out on a promotion, and probably a hefty pay-hike, to someone regarded as the new kid."  
  
"Good thinking," Mark said, making a mental note of this theory. "I'd been considering the possibility of someone losing their job to Holmes, and being replaced as Head of Paediatrics, but I'd not seen it from that angle. Amanda, are you free later?"  
  
"I'll have a look around," she said, knowing without being asked what Mark wished for her to do. She had already been planning the route to Oakes Valley even before Mark had asked her.  
  
There was a knock at the door at that moment, and those in the room were surprised to see Richard Holmes poke his head around the door. "Ah, Doctor Bentley, I-erm, could I have a word with you, please?" He ushered Amelia into the room and said, "I won't be long, wait in here with the Doctors, okay?"  
  
"Oh, hi there, Amelia," Mark said as the girl approached the bed, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her hooded sweater. "This is Doctor Stewart."  
  
"Call me Jack," the patient said, hoping that this would put the girl at ease.  
  
"What happened to you, Jack?" Amelia asked, unable to hold back her curiosity and resist questioning the young man's injuries. Jack at that moment realised that there was no need to help put the girl at ease - she was confident enough as it was. To Mark, she did not seem overly upset over her brother's death.  
  
"I got shot," Jack said casually, shrugging his shoulders and immediately regretting it as a soreness immediately shot through his body. He clutched his left shoulder and bit hard to try and ease it.  
  
"Hey, I wouldn't do that for a while," Mark advised as he watched Jack's face crease with pain. He waited to make sure Jack recovered from the spell of discomfort before he turned to Amelia and said, "Jack found your brother, but before he could help him the shooter found Jack."  
  
"Oh, well at least you tried," Amelia said consolingly.  
  
"Amelia, are you coping all right with your brother's death?" Mark asked, expressing the thought he'd been pondering over some minutes ago.  
  
Amelia shrugged. "I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, put it that way," she said, "and I was pretty shocked to start with, but once the shock has hit me I adapt fairly quickly. Besides, as brothers go, Anthony wasn't the greatest."  
  
"How so?" Mark asked.  
  
"I was born about fifteen years after Richard and Anthony, so I had missed out on getting to know them really well," Amelia said, reminiscing her childhood days. "By the time I was old enough to walk and talk, they were going away to college, and to medical school. Richard stayed close to home, and after our parents died he took me into custody and cared for me. Anthony cared, but he was far more career minded." She shoved her hands in her pockets and a thought seemed to occur to her. "So, have you found out what the food in here is like yet? I was in here a few months back - I broke my arm - and it was pretty gross."  
  
"I don't know, I've not had the pleasure of food yet," Jack said, looking at her suspiciously. He'd been in the business long enough to know that the girl was doing more than making idle chitchat, and he watched her intently as she strolled over to the window.  
  
Amelia chuckled slightly as something outside caught her eye. "Oh, wow, look at that!"  
  
"Look at what?" Mark asked, walking over to where Amelia was peering out of the window. Had the glass not been there, he thought that she would lean right out of it and take the fast route to the ground floor. "What is it?"  
  
Amelia took the opportunity to delve into her pockets and throw her spare chocolate bar deftly behind her towards Jack whilst still apparently focusing one hundred percent of her attention on something outside. "I just saw the coolest old car, it look like it had just fallen out of Grease or something, I mean, you don't see many cars like that walking around nowadays."  
  
"I don't see many cars in general walking around," Jack said, grinning. He had caught the chocolate bar as deftly as Amelia had thrown it and had immediately shoved it behind his pillow.  
  
She turned back to him, pretending to glare at him for the comment he had made, but instead mouthed, "For trying to save Anthony." She continued her spiel about the car, saying, "I'm sorry you missed it, Doctor Sloan, it turned that corner like a second before you got to the window. I only caught a glimpse of it, but man it was cool."  
  
Richard poked his head back around the door at that moment. "Come on, Em, time to go," he said, holding the door for her.  
  
"Bye," she said, waving before she closed the door.  
  
Mark instantly turned to Jack and said, "you can only keep it if you give me a piece, and if you don't eat it until after you've eaten your first solid meal, okay?" Mark knew exactly what was hidden behind Jack's pillow, and he wasn't going to allow Jack to get away with it unless he got part of it into the bargain.  
  
"Fine by me," Jack said, breaking the bar in half and handing one of the pieces over. He smiled, thinking that it was a nice gesture from the girl, and cleverly done. Of course, he would have had the whole bar if Mark weren't in the room. "What gave her away?"  
  
"I saw the reflection in the window," Mark said with his mouth full. He, like Jack, knew that Amelia had had something up her sleeve, and he made sure he saw exactly what it was.  
  
"Nothing gets past you," Jack chuckled, wrapping the rest of the bar up and placing it carefully behind the basket of flowers.  
  
~~ 


	6. Investigating

~~  
  
Steve pulled his truck up outside the respectable abode with its well- trimmed lawn and collection of pansies and crocuses arranged beneath the front room window, and walked with his father along the immaculately cemented path towards the bright white front door. "Nice place," he commented, not being able to see a spot of dirt past the mailbox in sight.  
  
Mark rung the doorbell, stepped back, and hit head on a wind chime. It tinkled angrily before Steve put his hand up to steady it.  
  
A small, lithe woman came opened the door, the tips of her golden-blonde hair brushing her shoulders. "Hi, can I help you?" She asked sweetly, wearing a smile that had lips of strawberries and gleaming teeth of cream.  
  
"Good afternoon, ma'am, is this the house of Maria Chartham?" Steve asked, making sure he'd got the right place before he began to question her concerning a murder.  
  
"That's me," Maria said, still smiling like her face might crack. "What can I do for you?"  
  
"I'm Lieutenant Steve Sloan, LAPD, and this is my father, Doctor Mark Sloan, a consultant with the police department," he said, fishing in his pocket for his ID card and badge. "May we come in?"  
  
"Sure, but I could save you the trouble, I paid that parking ticket this morning," she told them, unable to think of what other matter the police could be visiting her for. "Ask your friend, I think his name was Dan, he was quite cute actually."  
  
Steve made a mental note to tease Dan when he got back to the station, but now he had more pressing business to attend to. "Ms Chartham, this has nothing to do with an unpaid parking ticket," he said as they were ushered through the hallway towards the kitchen. "This concerns the murder of Doctor Anthony Holmes."  
  
The woman stopped in her stride and turned to face the Sloan men. "Anthony's dead?"  
  
"I'm afraid so, Ma'am," Steve said solemnly.  
  
"Murder?" She said, not able to believe it, and then she recalled something. "That guy on the news this morning, the doctor that was shot at the Mayfair last night, that was Anthony?"  
  
"Yes, it was," Steve said, taking the seat he was offered at the kitchen table. "Ms Chartham, we'd like to ask you a few questions regarding the murder of Doctor Holmes."  
  
"Okay," she said. "Can I offer you a cup of coffee?"  
  
"Black, one sugar, thanks," Steve said, grateful for all the coffee he could get that day. He'd not had any sleep since eight pm the previous evening, and it was beginning to catch up on him.  
  
"None for me, thank you," Mark said, speaking for the first time. He'd spent the time trying to assess the character of this woman, and preparing any questions he wished to ask her. Even without him asking any questions, he knew a fair bit about this woman judging from what he had seen of her house and her character thus far.  
  
"Ms Chartham, how would you describe your relationship with Anthony Holmes?" Steve asked, sipping the black liquid gratefully, feeling more awake and alert already.  
  
"We were friends," she said shortly. Mark and Steve looked at each other, they'd asked one question and already she was lying to them - not such a good start.  
  
"My sources tell me that you were more than friends with Anthony," Mark said, knowing that already he was beginning to tread on thin ice. "You and Anthony were engaged at one time, but then he broke it off. Why was that?"  
  
Maria sighed. "I'll never understand men," she said wistfully. "Anthony decides he wants to marry me, and of course I'm overjoyed and say yes, but three months later he calls the whole thing off, saying that he wanted to concentrate on his career." Mark noted this, feeling that it tied up with what Amelia had told him about Anthony being career-minded, but he still felt there was more to it than Maria was letting on. "Fair enough, he was a great doctor, and I respected that, but why ask me to marry him in the first place?"  
  
Steve tried another approach, one he'd looked into before he'd arrived at the house. "Ms Chartham, your bank statement tells me you made several substantial withdrawals since you and Anthony cancelled the wedding, which have continued on a regular basis to the present day. I'm willing to bet that those withdrawals will stop now that Anthony Holmes is dead."  
  
Maria did not like the way that things were going, this detective guy knew more than she was comfortable with. Instantly her sweetness disappeared and was replaced by anger. "And just what are you implying, Lieutenant Sloan?"  
  
Mark took it upon himself to change tact and try and calm Maria down, a brawl would get them nowhere. "Ms Chartham, are all the medals and trophies in the hall yours?"  
  
The young woman softened and said, "Yes, I used to be an International gymnast. I finished my professional career a couple of years ago, and since then I've been teaching gymnastics at Lincoln High School."  
  
Gymnastics? Mark immediately thought of the rope backstage at the Mayfair, where Anthony was shot. For a gymnast, particularly one of Maria's standard, climbing down the rope would be child's play.  
  
"That's where I met Anthony, at gymnastics classes when we were fourteen. He quit going after he picked up an injury, but I had dreamed of a career in gymnastics since I could walk, and I made it," she continued proudly.  
  
"One last question, Ms Chartham, where were you between eight and ten pm yesterday evening?" Steve asked, checking to see whether she had an alibi or not.  
  
"At Lincoln High School, it was the senior class prom yesterday," she said. "I was chaperoning between six thirty in the evening and two thirty this morning. And before you ask if there were any witnesses, besides a couple of hundred pupils, the Film and Media Studies teacher, Mr Wood, was filming the evening with a video camera, which if I recall has a time and date stamp in the corner of the picture throughout the footage."  
  
Something occurred to Mark when she said this. "Tell me, Ms Chartham, is Melanie Thomas one of your pupils?"  
  
Maria knew exactly what Mark was getting at. "I don't teach Mel, but I do know her. How is she, by the way?"  
  
That was when Mark knew that Maria Chartham's alibi was practically airtight. Driving back to the hospital in the truck, Steve enquired as to why Mark had asked her that. Mark explained, "I pumped Melanie's stomach last night, and I remember Kurt, her boyfriend, saying that they'd been at the Lincoln High Prom. Her alibi is good, Steve."  
  
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean she was telling the truth all the time - I'm sure Holmes was black-mailing her. And, I think that there's more to their break-up than she's letting on," he said, remembering how heated that part of the conversation had become. "I just wish I knew what the main reason was."  
  
"Let's hope Amanda has more luck tomorrow," Mark said, watching as the first lead came to a dead end.  
  
~~  
  
Small place, but fancy looking, Amanda thought to herself as she parked her car in the lot at Oakes Valley Hospital. She was nervous and excited at the same time - she was investigating and going undercover without Jack there to dig her out of the holes she frequently seemed to fall into. She locked her car and set off towards the building, her heels clicking on the tarmac.  
  
It was Sunday morning - Mark had told Amanda to go home and get a good night of sleep before she did any investigating, a remedy that he had also prescribed to Steve and himself - and Amanda was awake, refreshed, and ready to seek the information needed to find Anthony Holmes' killer.  
  
She soon found the Paediatrics Department in the establishment, and began to look around, seeing if there was anything at all that might point the finger at someone who had a reason to kill Anthony Holmes. A nurse, who had been watching her for some minutes, walked over to her and said, "Can I help you?" The nurse was short and well rounded, with greying hair tied back into a bun.  
  
"Hello," Amanda greeted amiably, "I'm Doctor Claire Horton. I'm a psychiatrist, sent here Oakes Valley by the local police department to make sure that none of the staff here were suffering from any kind of stress or trauma following the death of Doctor Holmes on Friday." It was a little far-fetched, Amanda admitted, but it was the best she could come up with.  
  
"Well, I think we're all doing fine, thank you," she said, a slight hint of spite within her voice. She shifted her eyes left and right, moved closer to Amanda and whispered, "some more than others."  
  
"Some more than others, huh?" Amanda said, giving the gossiping woman the push she needed to reveal more. She thanked her lucky stars that she had met this character, she knew that once you got a gossip started, you could find out just about anything from them.  
  
"Dr Holmes wasn't exactly Mr Popularity around here," the nurse said, only too pleased to tell the story. "Don't get me wrong, the guy was an excellent doctor, very thorough and efficient and I respect that, but you sometimes got the feeling that he didn't care for the patients as human beings, more like science studies to see whether the treatment he was using was working or not, and that's not such a great thing when you're working with kids."  
  
"I see," Amanda said, nodding to what the nurse had said to her. "You know, I hear that he was made Head of Paediatrics having been here only a year and eleven months - he must have been some doctor."  
  
"Like I said, he was efficient, but that's not the only thing that contributed to his promotion. When Doctor Murray retired last year, there were only two doctors being considered to take his place - Doctor Holmes, and another man called Doctor Forrester. Everyone thought Doctor Forrester would get the job - he's been here eighteen years, and every single kid he treats leaves with a smile on their faces, but the Board chose Doctor Holmes. You wanna know why?"  
  
"Tell me," Amanda said, egging the nurse on in her tale.  
  
"Well, Doctor Forrester has had some problems with drink in the past, but he's been to AA meetings and is getting it all under control, and he had totally recovered two years ago. But unfortunately, someone tipped off the Board a week before they made their decision, and they obviously thought it was a bad idea to promote someone with that kind of history, so Doctor Holmes was chosen instead. Whether or not Holmes stretched the truth or not is another matter," she added, nodding knowingly.  
  
"I see," Amanda said, pleased that she had made so much progress. Now, here was someone with a motive to kill Anthony Holmes, a big motive. "What about Doctor Forrester now?"  
  
"He was made Head of Paediatrics, as of yesterday," the nurse told him. "He's moving into his office right now, actually, if you want a word with him." The nurse was obviously looking to stir the pot, and create some action in the seemingly sterile and lifeless hospital.  
  
Amanda considered this, but she thought that perhaps she might leave that one to either Steve or Mark - it would look odd for a woman who was supposed to be a psychiatrist to walk into someone's office and start accusing them of murder. "Thank you, but no, I am afraid I have an appointment at eleven o'clock, and since you say that no one in here is in need of my assistance, I'll be going now. Thanks for your help," she said, the nurse not understanding just how helpful she had been.  
  
~~ 


	7. The Suspects

A/N: Just like to say thank you so much to all who have reviewed me, that's Tracy1, Sally1 and Alf, I do appreciate the feedback, like to know what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. Thank you!  
  
~~  
  
At lunchtime the same day, Mark walked into Jack's room to find him hunched over a pan, vomiting into it, whilst Amanda held his forehead and rubbed his back soothingly. Mark turned back into the hallway and requested a nurse to fetch a glass of water immediately. He went back in, and saw that Jack had finished and was lying back on his pillow, pale, panting and glazed in a film of perspiration.  
  
"Jack, are you okay?" Mark asked, handing him the glass of water that the nurse had just given him. To see Jack being sick was the last thing Mark had expected to find on walking into his room.  
  
Jack took the glass gratefully and took sips of the water, cooling his raw, stinging throat. "Yeah, I'm okay, my lunch just didn't like me, I'll be fine," he assured both Mark and Amanda, who were giving him looks of concern.  
  
Mark suspiciously asked, "Is that chocolate still there?"  
  
"Chocolate? Why wasn't I informed?" Amanda asked indignantly.  
  
"Yes, the chocolate's still here," Jack said, bringing it out from behind the flowers as proof. "Look, I'm okay, okay?"  
  
"Okay," Mark said, chuckling, satisfied for the moment. He clapped his hands together and addressed the subject at hand. "So, let's get down to business. It's ladies first, so Amanda, tell us what you found out."  
  
"Well," she began, perching on the foot of the bed whilst Mark placed the fan on the floor and took the chair, "there is a man at Oakes Valley with a rather big motive for killing Anthony Holmes. He's a doctor called Forrester, the other paediatrics doctor in the hospital. Both were up for promotion a month ago, and Forrester should have got it - he's been at Oakes Valley for eighteen years, and was apparently better with the kids there. But, someone told the Board that Forrester had once had a drinking problem, and even though he'd got it under control and sorted out, Holmes still got the promotion. From what the nurse I talked to said, it looked like Holmes tipped off the Board."  
  
"You were right, Jack, someone had lost out to 'the new kid', and I'll bet that someone is not all that happy at the moment," Mark said, seeing that two heads were definitely better than one.  
  
"Oh, I'll bet he is," Amanda said knowingly. "Forrester was moving into his new office as I left, the one with the sign on the door that read: Head of Paediatrics Department."  
  
"It's gotta be him," Jack said, clapping his hands together.  
  
"Hey, you haven't heard my story yet," Mark said in indignation. "Steve and I went to visit Maria Chartham yesterday, and she's not been knocked off the suspect list by any means. One flaw is that she's got an airtight alibi - Amanda, do you know whether Forrester has an alibi for Friday evening?"  
  
"I don't know, Mark - I thought I'd leave that side of the investigation to you and Steve," she said.  
  
"Okay, good girl," Mark said, not wanting Amanda to place herself in anymore peril than was necessary. "Anyway, Maria was chaperoning at the Lincoln High School Senior Prom, and we've got video footage to prove it. But, she's got real motive - she was engaged to Anthony before he suddenly broke it off, for starters. She claims that it was so that Anthony could work on his career, but Steve and I think that there's more to it than that. Also, since Holmes broke their engagement, her bank statement says she's been making regular and substantial withdrawals."  
  
"Blackmail," Amanda stated. "Holmes was blackmailing her after he broke off their marriage plans. But why?"  
  
"That's what I intend to find out," Mark said.  
  
"So, that's two people that benefit from Anthony Holmes' death," Jack said, trying to summarize the evidence. "One of them must have killed him."  
  
"But the question is, which one?" Amanda said, thinking that it could well have been either of them. "Even if Maria had been at the Prom all evening, she could have still hired someone to do the dirty work for her."  
  
"That's possible," Mark said, pondering this, "but I think that if Maria wanted Anthony dead she would have done it herself. Steve said that there was a rope backstage, attached to one of the backdrops. When we visited Maria's house, her hallway was lined with hundred of medals and trophies, all for gymnastics. She would have had no trouble negotiating the rope, even in the dark."  
  
"We'd have a better idea of things if we knew why Maria was being blackmailed," Amanda said.  
  
"Well, Steve's on his way over there right now. He watched the tape this morning, and said that he found something very interesting on it, and he's going to talk to her about it. After that, I'm going to have a look at the crime scene, and then probably see Doctor Forrester at Oakes Valley."  
  
"And then you've got rounds this evening," Amanda reminded him.  
  
"When does he sleep?" Jack wondered out loud.  
  
"Well, if you'll excuse me, I have an autopsy to do," Amanda said, getting up from the bed. "See you later, and hope you feel better, Jack."  
  
"I feel fine!" Jack insisted as he called it to her. He turned to Mark and repeated, "I feel fine, discharge me already!"  
  
"Oh no, my friend, you're staying exactly where you are," Mark said firmly. "I don't like the look of your colour right now, and I'm not even going to consider discharging you until you can stomach solid food. Got it?"  
  
"Yeah, I got it," Jack mumbled. "Here, take the rest of this, at this rate I'll never get to eat it."  
  
Mark nodded and said, "I'll take it, for your own good, of course, I wouldn't want you tempted to eat and then throwing it back up again. See you later," he said, leaving Jack alone with his thoughts, and Jack had quite a few at this point in time.  
  
Until he started looking at it another way, he was sure that either Maria Chartham or Dr Forrester had been the murderer, but then a thought had occurred to him. Anthony had tipped off the Board about something in Forrester's life, something incriminating, in order to get what he wanted and progress in life. What if that hadn't been the first time he'd done that?  
  
Jack remembered well how competitive some people at Medical School had been, and he had the feeling that Anthony Holmes had been no different from these people, bearing in mind the incident concerning the promotion in the Paediatrics department. Jack suspected that Holmes may have done the same thing in Medical School, maybe even before, and he knew exactly how to find out.  
  
~~  
  
"Oh, Lieutenant Sloan, you're back," Maria Chartham said wearily, looking at him in the same way you might look at a scruffy stray that had followed you home. "How can I help you?"  
  
"Another few questions to ask you, if I may," Steve said, armed and ready with ammunition this time. He'd been down to see Mr Wood that morning, and sure enough the videotape revealed that she had been telling the truth. But, he'd discovered more than he'd bargained on.  
  
"Come in," she said, sounding slightly irritated at his appearance.  
  
"Hey, Maria, who was that?" A male voice called down the stairs. Steve watched Maria cringe, and knew that although he'd come at an inconvenient time for Maria, he'd come at a very convenient time for his investigation.  
  
"Ask him to come down," Steve said, feeling that there was no point wasting time explaining that he had figured her out. "He's got a part in the story I'm about to tell you."  
  
Maria knew that she was well and truly beaten. "Sam, could you come down a second, please?"  
  
Sam walked into the living room, wearing only his jeans, and gasped. "You're a cop - Steve Sloan! My mom knows you, what are you doing here?"  
  
"Cool it, Sam," Maria said, knowing that she was in a lot of trouble as it was, and she didn't need his fiery temper landing her in any more.  
  
"Where shall I begin? All right, firstly, you lied to me yesterday, you were being blackmailed by Anthony Holmes, and now I know why. Anthony broke off your engagement when he found out that you and Sam over there were together. But, he didn't leave it there; he knew a way to get back at you. Sam, what are you now, just turned eighteen? Back then, he was fifteen, and that meant he was below the legal age. Anthony thought to himself, she's sleeping with one of her pupils, who is underage. She could lose her job, at the very least. So, Anthony began blackmailing you, which gives you, Maria, plenty of motive to kill Anthony Holmes."  
  
"But, you must have checked the tapes, I have an alibi for the time of his murder," she said insistently, feeling frustrated. She really was telling the truth this time, he had to believe her, she never left the prom.  
  
"Oh, I know that," Steve said, "but it doesn't mean that you didn't get someone else to kill him for you, like maybe Sam here, the young, budding gymnast. You'd do anything for Maria, wouldn't you?"  
  
"I draw the line at murder," Sam said indignantly.  
  
"Even knowing that Anthony had the power to split you two up?"  
  
"I would never kill anyone," Sam repeated. "Look, check the video closely, you'll find I was at the Prom."  
  
Steve watched Maria cringe again, and she realised what had led Sloan to realise how she was being blackmailed. Steve smiled slightly. "I know you were at the Prom, Sam. That's how I realised why Anthony was blackmailing you." As well as seeing Sam and Maria on separate occasions throughout the tape, he had found something more interesting. He had seen footage when someone had put the camera down in the kitchen during the clean-up process, and left it thinking that it was switched off. Sam and Maria had had a moment alone in the corner of the kitchen, kissing passionately.  
  
"Detective Sloan, are you going to arrest Maria?" Sam asked timidly, looking like an innocent teenager should at that moment, his blue eyes wide with fear as the reality of the situation struck him.  
  
"Well, the only person that knew for sure is dead, so I don't have the evidence to say that when you and Maria slept together, you were a minor," Steve said. "You'll only both deny it in court. But, Maria is still a suspect for Holmes' murder. Ms Chartham, do you own a gun?"  
  
"No, I don't," she told him, irritation glazing her voice. She'd had just about all she could take from this meddling policeman. "Are you about done, Detective Sloan?"  
  
"For now," Steve said, getting up from the chair. "Don't leave town, either of you," he advised as he left the house. He didn't really suspect Sam of murdering anyone, but Maria's cool reception had not put him in the best of moods. That, and they still didn't have a murderer.  
  
~~ 


	8. Jack's Adventure

~~  
  
The nurse quietly closed the door of Jack's room and walked down the hallway, having just checked and noted the patient's vital signs. It was midnight, and all was quiet around the hospital. Perfect, Jack thought to himself. He carefully and quietly climbed out of bed and made his way towards the small cupboard to the side of the room, where a change of clothes had been stored ready for Jack's discharge from the hospital. It took twenty agonising minutes to try and do up buttons, zips and shoelaces with one good hand, but he managed it.  
  
Jack walked through the hospital with his head kept low. He took the route down one of the more desolate stairwells and through the deserted underground parking lot. He would have preferred to drive rather than walk, but someone had driven his car home since he was admitted to hospital. He hurried across the city dressed in a pair of faded jeans, a t- shirt that had been torture to get his injured arm into, and a denim jacket that Jack had just draped around his bad shoulder. His sneakers made only a quiet crunching noise as he trod the sidewalk, walking quickly towards his destination.  
  
~~  
  
Jack was skilled enough to find his way into the warehouse without the use of his 'tools.' He found a piece of twine that was wrapped around a small tree on his journey, and he managed to bend it in such a way that the lock snapped open in almost no time. He switched on one light, allowing enough for him to work though the room but not too much that would attract attention to the building.  
  
The doctor shivered as he walked in. The July heat had apparently not reached the insides of the warehouse, and Jack pulled his coat around him tighter. He crept through the shelves, his sneakers making little noise on the cold, hard floor.  
  
For Jack, it was easy to find what he wanted. He knew that the warehouse, situated across town from the hospital, contained files of all the doctors that had practised medicine in the city, including all the medical students that had begun Medical School but never graduated, for CV references and so forth. Jack had worked out the year that Anthony's class would have started Med. School, and found the box containing files of him and his classmates. Jack knew that finding something was a shot in the dark, but he couldn't take sitting around in a hospital bed any longer, he had to do something.  
  
Reaching the box of files proved more difficult than finding it. The box was up high on the shelf, and Jack had only one arm he could use to get it. He moved some of the boxes that were on the lower shelves so that he could climb on them and get the box he needed. He grabbed the box with one hand, teetered on his toes on the weak cardboard box he was poised upon, and steadied himself before crouching on the floor and beginning his search.  
  
He firstly found the file with "Holmes" written in black marker-pen on the front of it. "I'll take a look at that later," he muttered to himself as he dropped it on the floor after glancing at the name. He knew that there could be any number of clues in the file and that it would take some time to go through.  
  
There were another twelve files to look through. The third that Jack came to belonged to a man called Benjamin Dawson, and the contents of the file pleased Jack immensely. "Interesting," Jack said, smiling as he read what was printed inside, "very interesting." He put this on top of Holmes' file and continued to search.  
  
Jack spent another few minutes searching before he heard the door creak open. Quick as a flash Jack had replaced the box on the shelf, omitting the two files he wanted, and he had scampered away into a dark corner.  
  
"Hmm, the light's on," the man mumbled. Jack cursed, but he was glad that the part of the warehouse he was hiding in was not well lit. He crouched lower behind a pile of boxes, trying to look at the man but only seeing a silhouette.  
  
The man walked over to the box that Jack had been looking in only seconds ago, and began to rummage through it. After looking through for the third time, he stood up and kicked the box in anger. "It's not there! Where the Hell..." he shouted, the end of his sentence cut off as he kicked the box again and stormed out of the warehouse, slamming the door as he left.  
  
Jack grinned to himself, his teeth shining like the Cheshire cat smile of a moon he could see above him, outside a grubby window. "That's all the proof I need," he said to himself, holding tightly the file that belonged to Benjamin Dawson in his hand. With his success in mind, Jack began his journey back to the hospital.  
  
~~  
  
Jack made it back to the hospital at just before four that morning. He crept back through the corridors, opened the door to his room and instantly shut it again, not going inside. Both Mark and Steve were in there, apparently having noticed that he, Jack, was not in his bed.  
  
Mark opened the door and found Jack outside in the empty corridor, forehead leaning on and facing the cool wall, awaiting his scolding. The older doctor ushered Jack inside before the lecture began. "Jack, what were you thinking?"  
  
Jack overheard Steve talking in a low voice on his cell phone, saying, "it's okay, he's here." Hold it, Jack thought to himself, were they sending out a search party or something - only been gone a few hours!  
  
"How'd you find out I was gone?" Jack asked as he sat on the bed, slipping his shoes off. He thought that his plan was flawless, the timing at least, but then he knew that no one or nothing got past Mark Sloan.  
  
"I was doing rounds, your rounds," Mark added for extra ammunition, "and I stopped by to see how you were doing," Mark said, folding his arms and attempting to look menacing. He repeated, "What were you thinking, Jack?"  
  
"I'm sorry, Mark, but I knew what to look for, I knew where to find it, and I got it," Jack said coolly, annoyed at himself for being caught. He hadn't planned Mark stopping by for a visit in the small hours of the morning.  
  
"You could have asked one of us," Mark said, rolling his eyes with exasperation. It wasn't so much anger than worry that was fuelling the dispute. He sighed, and said, "Jack you were shot and underwent surgery two days ago. I don't know if going out on midnight excursions is such a great idea right now, especially on your own and without telling me."  
  
"Okay, Mark, I'm fine, I understand, I'm sorry, it won't happen again, now do you want to find out who killed Anthony Holmes or not?"  
  
"You know? And you're sure about it?" Steve asked dubiously, wondering exactly where Jack had been and what he had found. "Who do you think it is?"  
  
"Benjamin Dawson," Jack pronounced.  
  
"Who?" Steve and Mark asked at the same time, questioning as to how and way a new name was being thrown into this equation at this stage of the investigation.  
  
"Here, read this," Jack said, handing Mark the file. "Let me explain. I got to thinking yesterday that what Anthony Holmes did to Forrester, dishing the dirt to get what he wanted, may not have been a first offence, it could have started in Med. School. So, I went over to the warehouse and had a look through some files when I found that."  
  
"Ah, yes, this is good," Mark said, reading through the file with a smile playing upon his lips. Jack had deserved the telling-off for sneaking out, but what he had found would be beneficial to the investigation.  
  
"What is it?" Steve asked.  
  
"This Benjamin Dawson was in Holmes' class when they were in Med. School, but Dawson was kicked out when it was discovered that he had been cheating, by handing in an assignment lifted from a lesser-known medical journal - plagiarism. Dawson was reported to his professor by none other than..."  
  
"Anthony Holmes," Steve finished, knowing exactly who would be responsible for such an act. "Nice work, Detective Stewart."  
  
"Cute, Steve," Jack said, stifling a yawn.  
  
"Their professor was someone called Doctor Hammond," Mark continued, still reading. "I think I'll give him a call in the morning." He handed the file to Steve, who glanced over it, but felt that if his father had mentioned nothing else than there was nothing else that was relevant. "We've now got three suspects: Maria Chartham, Doctor Forrester, and now Benjamin Dawson."  
  
"James Forrester admitted earlier, when I spoke to him, that he wasn't Anthony Holmes' biggest fan, and that he wasn't sad to see him dead, but he said that he didn't have the pleasure of doing it himself. He claims that despite all the stress in his life, and all the hate he feels for Holmes after reporting him to the Board, he is a doctor first and foremost, and that he will 'do no harm'."  
  
"Maybe," Mark said, "but I've seen doctors, priests, even a nun commit murder, and taking vows or oaths never stopped them. Has Forrester got an alibi?"  
  
"He was at an AA meeting that night, until 9pm."  
  
"I thought Amanda said that Forrester had the drinking problem under control," Mark said, remembering what he had been told. He wished he'd been able to see James Forrester with Steve that afternoon, but by the time he'd finished looking over the crime scene he was due back at the hospital to cover Jack's rounds, so Steve had gone alone.  
  
"He returned to weekly meetings a month ago," Steve told him. "The stress of losing out to Holmes for promotion, he told me."  
  
"All right, I think we've had enough adventure for tonight," Mark said, knowing that they wouldn't be able to advance until Doctor Hammond was phoned. "Steve, I'll call you tomorrow with what Doctor Hammond said, and as for you, Jack, I -"  
  
Mark had turned around to address Jack, but had found him curled up on the bed, sound asleep, exhausted from the events of the early morning. Mark smiled at the picture before him, wishing he had a camera to capture the moment that would have no doubt embarrassed the younger doctor, and gently pulled the covers over the sleeping body.  
  
~~ 


	9. Mistaken Identity

~~  
  
Mark had just got off the phone, following his conversation with Doctor Hammond, when Norman marched into his office, looking as agitated and frustrated as he usually did. "Good afternoon, Norman, what can I do for you?" Mark asked cheerfully. It was just after midday, and Mark had been home for a shower and six hours of sleep before returning to the hospital to do his own rounds.  
  
"Mark, I thought there were no secrets between us," Norman said, clasping his hands and pacing the room. On second inspection, Mark decided that Norman looked more agitated and frustrated than usual.  
  
Mark tried to smother a smile at Norman's choice of words, and asked, "What are you talking about, Norman?"  
  
"I think you should fire Doctor Stewart."  
  
This time, Mark thought to himself, Norman really has lost it. "Why should I do that? Jack's a great Doctor, why would I want to fire him?" After a moment, he asked, "Is it because he was shot?"  
  
"You know," Norman stressed, wringing his hands, "we just can't have people like him waltzing around Community General, playing doctor."  
  
"As far as I know, Norman, Jack doesn't waltz, and he most certainly does not play, he's very serious about his career," Mark told him firmly, wondering what on earth Norman was ranting about. Norman never made sense at the best of times, but today he was really taking it to the extreme. "Are you all right, Norman? Have you seen a doctor lately?"  
  
"Very funny," Norman muttered, not realising the Mark was being very serious. "And by career, which one would you be talking about?" Norman shot at him.  
  
Mark was now thoroughly lost. "Come again?"  
  
"He told me everything, Mark, you don't need to play dumb with me." Norman edged towards the baffled doctor and whispered in his ear the tale that Jack had told him two days ago. It was then that Mark realised what Jack had said to Norman to upset him so, and make him all the more uptight.  
  
"When did Jack tell you this?" Mark asked him.  
  
"When I asked him how he got shot," Norman said, now in full swing. "He tried to cover up that he'd been shot by looking for the bathroom, but I figured it out, that he was a spy posing as a doctor, and he went to hear Doctor Holmes speak at the Charity Ball, because it was code for his investigation -"  
  
"Calm down, Norman," Mark said, grasping the shorter man by the shoulders. "Listen, Jack really got shot when he was looking for the bathroom."  
  
The penny dropped. "And I didn't believe him?"  
  
"And you didn't believe him," Mark confirmed, letting Norman go. As an afterthought, he said, "and yet, you believed that he was a spy."  
  
"Mention this to no one," Norman ordered, looking decidedly embarrassed at that moment, as well as ashamed for asking Mark to fire Jack. He straightened the arms of his suit that had become crumpled, and smoothed his tie, before turning on his heel and retreating from the room, Mark unable to resist chuckling as he left.  
  
Delores walked into the room, jingling with gold jewellery as usual, as Mark's hand hovered over the receiver to call Steve and inform him about the conversation with Doctor Hammond. "Doctor Sloan," she said, wanting to catch him before he made the call. "Jack asked me to give you this. He said he forgot to give it to you, and sorry its creased but he fell asleep on it."  
  
Chuckling, Mark picked it up and said, "Ah, good, he found the file on Anthony Holmes, too."  
  
"He did?" Delores asked, cocking one eyebrow.  
  
Mark bit his lower lip. The secret of Jack's adventure that early morning was meant to have stayed between him, Jack and Steve, plus the officer that Steve had called moments before Jack had arrived, but Steve had told him that it was a misunderstanding. If it got out, the hospital would have a lot of explaining to do. "You never heard that," Mark said, hoping that Delores would understand.  
  
Delores winked and said, "Heard what?" before walking back into her office to continue her work.  
  
Mark opened the file, read the top line and frowned. "This isn't Anthony's file, this is Richard's." He read another line and said to himself, "Richard never said he was a doctor." A few more lines and a smile replaced the frown on his face. "Jack doesn't know it," he said to no one in particular, "but he's just solved the murder. First, though, I'd better call Doctor Hammond and speak with him about this."  
  
~~  
  
"Good day, Doctor Sloan," Doctor Hammond greeted, getting up from his comfortable leather chair and shaking Mark's hand.  
  
"Good afternoon, and thank you again for agreeing to an appointment with me, Doctor Hammond," Mark said, adding, "and it's Mark."  
  
"No problem, and please call me John," Doctor Hammond said, gesturing for Mark to take a seat. "I wish we were meeting under better circumstances, but that's life, I guess."  
  
"I agree," Mark said, now feeling that the time for introductions was over and they should be getting to the point. "Tell me about Anthony and Richard. What were they like to teach?"  
  
"In the classroom, model students - attentive, always asking and answering questions, eager to learn, and generally a real joy to teach. But, after about a year or so, the tension began to build. They were so competitive, always trying to better each other with grades and so forth. One would give an answer, and the other would counter it, argue it, correct it, anything to get the better of the other." He paused for a moment, and said, "I have to say, Anthony was the worst of the two, but I think being the oldest twin was the reason for that. I suppose he felt that being the oldest gave him some kind of automatic authority over Richard."  
  
Mark nodded, understanding. "So, how did it happen?" He asked, referring to what was written in the file.  
  
"It was the night before their final exam, the one that both their grades were riding on, and the class went out to celebrate the night before, as one of the students was leaving to go to a funeral or something directly after the exam, and they all wanted to be together to celebrate. You and I both know the kinds of things that students have at these parties - drink, drugs. According to one of the other students I spoke to, Anthony basically got Richard high on just about everything there, he was drunk up to his eyeballs, and then Anthony introduced him to experimenting with the non-prescription kind of drugs. By the time he came crashing back down, he had to take his exam, and you can imagine he flunked it. There's no evidence to prove it bar eye-witnesses, but Anthony was responsible for what happened to Richard at the party, and therefore responsible for Richard losing out on a career as a doctor."  
  
"Hmm," Mark said, the motive for murder reminding him of a certain Shakespearean play. "A case of Iago and Cassio here, possibly."  
  
"Pardon?"  
  
"Never mind," Mark said, going back to the subject at hand. "What happened to the brothers after that?"  
  
"Richard, as far as I know, is working in a downtown supermarket by day, and studies to try and get his medical degree by night, whilst looking after Amelia in between, but since the day of their finals I've heard little from him," Doctor Hammond explained. "Anthony began work in the paediatrics department in Oakes Valley - he graduated top of the class and they took him immediately. Not long later, he's promoted to Head of Department - that's almost unheard of. Oakes Valley isn't a big hospital, I know, but still!" Doctor Hammond evidently had still not got over the shock of it - he knew that Anthony was bright, but surely he couldn't have climbed the ropes that fast?  
  
"Anthony was chosen over another doctor in the department, as he apparently tipped off the Board about Doctor Forrester's previous problems with alcohol," Mark explained, he himself disbelieving at how fast Holmes had been promoted until he had heard how it had been managed.  
  
Doctor Hammond too understood. "That's how he does it," he muttered in a disgusted tone, "and how he would have always done it. He'd climb to the top of the ladder by pushing everyone else off in the process. He did it to this Forrester guy, he did it to Ben, and he did it to his brother, too, his own flesh and blood."  
  
At the mention of Ben's name Mark thought back to the conversation he'd had with Doctor Hammond but two hours ago. Ben Dawson had been the top student in the class for the first year at Medical School, John Hammond had told Mark over the phone, but Anthony had the yearning, the desire, to be the best. He dug deep to find something to incriminate Ben Dawson, and he found that Ben had copied an important essay from a lesser-known medical book. Anthony had shown the book to Doctor Hammond, and Dawson had been expelled from Medical School.  
  
"But why do that to Richard? What did he gain?" Mark asked, seeing what was to be achieved for the other two cases, but not in Richard's case.  
  
"It was sibling rivalry, pure betting of the other," Doctor Hammond told him in a grave voice. "You know what its like when you're kids, you always want to do better than your brother or sister, to make your parents proud of you, but these two never grew out of it. They joined all the same clubs - art classes, gymnastics, baseball, music classes, even a gun club when they reached the legal age - just to compete and see who would come out on top."  
  
That finished it for Mark. He should have seen one of those examples before - he knew that Anthony had joined a gymnastics club, where he met Maria, and he should have guessed that Richard would go to, but a gun club too? This was all the evidence he needed. "John, time is of the essence and I have to go. Thank you so much for all that you've told me, you've been a great help." Mark got up from the chair, as did John, and they shook hands.  
  
"You're welcome, Mark," John said, walking with him to the door of his office. "I'm sorry this business got so messy."  
  
"So am I," Mark told him, before realising what the doctor had meant and hastily added, "this is not your fault, or anyone's, at all. It's in their characters, and no one could do anything to change that. I'll be in touch," he said as he walked out of the room, knowing that the doctor might be required to speak at a probable court case.  
  
~~  
  
On the way back to the hospital, Mark was called by Steve, and Mark sighed as he had totally forgotten about keeping his son updated in his side of the investigation. "Hi, Steve," he said, switching the hands-free phone on. "Did you find anything out?"  
  
"Dad, do you know someone called Amelia?"  
  
"Sure, she's Anthony Holmes' younger sister," Mark told him, alarm bells immediately sounding inside his mind. Where was Amelia in relation to Richard at that moment? "Why? Is she all right? Is she in some kind of trouble?"  
  
"No, she's okay, she went to see Jack in the hospital," Steve said, remembering what Jack had told him in the phone conversation he'd had only moments ago. "The alibi Richard Holmes had wasn't as airtight as he thought. Sure, he took Amelia and her friend to the movies that evening, but he went outside to the bathroom and to get some popcorn ten minutes before Anthony was shot, for half an hour. Richard claims that there was a long queue, but the movie theatre is only three blocks away from the Mayfair."  
  
"Steve, he did it," Mark said, driving faster as the pieces of the puzzle continued to fall into place before his eyes. He explained the conversations he had had with John Hammond, Steve listening intently throughout.  
  
"Means, motive, opportunity," Steve said when his father had finished speaking.  
  
"Exactly," Mark said, pulling into the hospital parking lot. "Where's Amelia now?"  
  
"Still with Jack," Steve said, planning ahead with that one and asking Jack to make sure Amelia stayed in the hospital, away from Richard. "Holmes should be at work about now. Shall I bring him in?"  
  
"No," Mark said firmly, sitting in his parked car. "I have a better idea."  
  
~~ 


	10. Exposure

~~  
  
A figure crept through the window in the bathroom backstage, and flicked his torch on. He moved with stealth through the shadows, feeling that guilty paranoia that he was being watched in the dark, empty function room. Creeping onto the stage, he found what he was looking for quickly. He carefully peeled back the silver tape that held down one of the thick, black electrical leads running over the stage. Beneath it was the bullet hole and the bullet buried deep in the wood. Earlier, after he had fired the second shot that had missed, he'd had neither the time nor equipment required to prise the bullet from the hole, so he had just moved the tape and cable to conceal it. What Doctor Sloan had said to him over the phone a couple of hours ago have given him the incentive to retrieve that stray bullet.  
  
"It'll be hard to trace the killer," Mark had said to Richard, speaking to him in confidence. "Jack and another woman both had exit wounds, both the bullets in both Anthony and a woman's back both broke up - how she escaped paralysis is a medical wonder - and the rest suffered grazes. We couldn't find any of the bullets, we think that the killer came back disguised as a guest and picked up the stray bullets, but the police are going to continue looking tomorrow."  
  
All this was a lie on Mark's part, of course, none of the victims had exit wounds, none of the bullets had broke up, and the police had accounted for all of them, including the one hidden beneath the tape. But, Mark wanted Richard to think that there was still something left to find, and taking the bait the killer returned to the scene of the crime.  
  
As Richard turned away, having got the bullet out from the hole, he heard the curtains fly back and felt a heated spotlight upon him. He turned around, shielded his eyes, and saw Mark Sloan walking across he stage.  
  
"You've just confessed, Richard," Mark said, one hand in his jacket pocket as his walk slowed. "You showed us where that bullet was, something only the killer knew. You didn't have time to get it out, because Jack found you."  
  
"Pesky doctor," Richard muttered, walking out of the spotlight, but it moved to follow him.  
  
"Yes," Mark said, leaning on the back of one of the chairs that was on the stage. "That was your first mistake, and I never picked up on it until today. Doctor Bentley and I were in Jack's room when you walked in to speak to her. As well as getting jumpy when you recognised Jack, you asked Amelia to wait with the 'doctors.' You only knew that Jack was a doctor because you shot him at the Ball."  
  
"I hate doctors," Richard snarled, malice in his voice. His hand brushed past his pants, and he felt the cold, hard lump inside his pocket.  
  
"Is that why you killed Anthony? Because he was a doctor?"  
  
Richard managed half a smile and shook his head. "No. I killed Anthony because he was a spiteful man. Look at his track record! He got Ben Dawson kicked out of Medical School so that he could be top of his class, and he got me to flunk my exams so he could impress my father and be better than me, so he could be the living legend in our family. He ruined everyone else so that he could rule in his sad little world. Then came the last straw, James Forrester. For eighteen years that man slaved away, and then Anthony shows up and crowns himself the King of Paediatrics at Oakes Valley. I had to stop him before he wrecked anymore lives. And now, Doctor Sloan, you've found me out, and that's not only going to wreck my life, but Amelia's too." He pulled the gun out of his pocket and aimed it at Mark.  
  
Steve saw the danger his father had just been placed in and reacted immediately. He said a couple of words into his communicator and six police jumped out from behind various hiding places on the stage, each of their guns trained on Richard Holmes.  
  
"Drop the gun, Holmes," Steve growled, taking one step towards the murderer.  
  
Holmes hesitated for a moment. If he shot Doctor Sloan, then in an instant he'd surely be shot and killed. But then again, he'd committed murder so in the end he'd be killed anyway, so there was nothing to lose. He had just touched the trigger when he thought of Amelia. His little sister was the only thing he had to live for, and he had to make sure she had a home to go to before he served his punishment. Richard carefully placed the gun on the floor and raised his arms in the air, stone-faced.  
  
~~  
  
Mark did the buttons on Jack's shirt up as the patient sat patiently, waiting to be discharged from the hospital. "What happens to Amelia now that Richard has gone to prison?" He asked Steve, who was crawling under the bed looking for Jack's shoe, which had disappeared following his midnight excursion.  
  
"An aunt of hers lives nearby, and has offered to take care of her," Steve explained as he emerged from beneath the bed, shoe in hand. "I'm told that a jury will probably be lenient, given Richard's responsibility for Amelia and his reasons for killing Anthony, but only time will tell."  
  
"Good morning, Jack, going home today?" Amanda said cheerfully as she walked gracefully into the room.  
  
"Yep, he's going home, where he's going to stay until Monday," Mark said, a warning tone in his voice, letting Jack know that if he decided to go against doctors orders for a second time, he would not be as lenient as he had been two days ago when he left the hospital in the middle of the night.  
  
"Hold on, I gotta stay there? How am I meant to go get my groceries?" Jack wondered what on earth he was going to do being cooped up in his apartment for five days, alone.  
  
"All that will be taken care of for you," Mark promised him. "You won't need to do a thing except rest."  
  
"Doctor Stewart," the crisp voice of Norman Briggs filtered into the room just in front of the man himself. He had apparently recovered from his embarrassment enough to see Jack and to let him know that he was not impressed at being lied to. "Or, is it Double-O-Stewart today, I wonder?"  
  
Jack knew that there was something he'd forgotten. "Oh, hi Norman, how are you?" he asked, ignoring the confused looks of both Amanda and Steve.  
  
"Very well, thank you, Doctor Stewart," Norman said, his voice smooth, as if it was trying to control a volatile temper that was rarely seen beyond short shouting. "I hear you have until Monday off work. Got anything planned?"  
  
"Rest," Mark said firmly, he and the rest of those in the room wondering where Norman's conversation was going.  
  
"Well, here's a suggestion for you," Norman continued in his sickly slick voice, ignoring Mark's prescription. "Take up writing - with that story you spun I'm sure you could have a best-seller finished by the time you come back to work."  
  
"Yeah, that's funny, Norman, real funny," Jack muttered, pushing his wheelchair forward slightly with one arm. "Just out of interest, how many people did you have to ask to figure out that yes, I really did get shot on the way to the bathroom and no, I am not really a spy?"  
  
Norman looked at his feet and blushed.  
  
"If you'll excuse me, Mr Briggs, I've got go home and rest," Jack said as Steve and Amanda escorted him out of the room before asking questions about what just happened.  
  
"How do you do it, Mark?" Norman asked, waiting for a moment until everyone was out of earshot.  
  
"Do what, Norman?" Mark asked, placing the paperwork in a file.  
  
"Get people to like you."  
  
"Well, you've got to trust people, for starters," Mark said, walking down the hospital corridor with Norman.  
  
Norman thought about this for a moment, almost warming to the idea, until he realised something and he burst out, "Trust? How can I trust Jack Stewart after the stunt he pulled? I wouldn't trust him to treat my sore throat! Good day, Mark!"  
  
Mark chuckled to himself as Norman marched down the hallway, glaring at anyone who was unfortunate to pass him. Yes, Mark thought to himself, things were back to normal once again.  
  
~~  
  
The End 


End file.
